"The Most Warlike Nation" from "Heavenly Beautiful" Islands: Japan in Matas Šalčius’s Travels

ENThis paper has concluded, leaving more unsolved puzzles than the questions it has succeeded to answer. It is evident that although the materials accumulated in the archive are very helpful in tracing Šalčius’s travels, there are also numerous gaps which can lead to unfounded assumptions and misinterpretations. Despite that, Šalčius’s legacy is clear and substantial: he was among the first Lithuanians who built connections with Japan and increased awareness about this country in Lithuania. Even more importantly, Šalčius depicted Japan in a nuanced way thanks to his more positive impressions during his first two visits and rather negative experience when he observed Japanese invasion in China and was expelled from Japan in 1933. This allows Šalčius to tell the readers that Japan is not only a distant land with exotic culture but also a country undergoing rapid modernization and westernization, with imperialist ambitions and political importance even for Lithuania.There are several potential directions for future research on this topic. Firstly, a more detailed examination of newspaper articles both in Lithuania and Japan is needed to clarify the scope of Šalčius’s publications on Japan in Lithuania and on Lithuania in Japan. It is likely that Šalčius contributed a few articles to smaller and regional newspapers in Japan, especially in 1918, which are more difficult to obtain. Similarly, digitalized versions of Lithuanian newspapers do not provide many clues about Šalčius’s publications. Therefore, more work is needed with newspaper archives both in Japan and Lithuania. Secondly, a more extensive research on early Lithuanian communities in Japan would help to better understand how much Šalčius was part of their activities. Although there are sporadic reports about individual Lithuanians visiting and living in Japan during the inter-war period, the information has not been analysed systematically. As it was mentioned earlier, the question who was the first Lithuanian to visit Japan stands unanswered, as well as broader questions about cooperation between individual Lithuanians living in Tokyo, Kobe and other cities.Finally, a complicated task to gather letters sent to other people by Šalčius could help to fill many gaps in knowledge about his life. The archive right now mostly offers us to read letters that Šalčius received himself, but from them we also know that Šalčius wrote hundreds of letters to different people around the world telling them about his travels and activities. Some of the recipients of Šalčius’s letters are influential people of that time whose belongings, including correspondence, could be donated for archives and made publicly available one day. This and other approaches would allow future researchers to add more pieces to the yet unsolved puzzle of Šalčius’s visits to Japan.